


unravel at the seams

by Iki_teru



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Kingdom Hearts III - Re Mind DLC Spoilers, Kingdom Hearts III Spoilers, Lonely Riku (Kingdom Hearts)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-03-03 06:02:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24399949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iki_teru/pseuds/Iki_teru
Summary: SPOILERS FOR KH III RE MIND Sora and Kairi are gone and Riku struggles to come to grips with how they all got here as he's left picking up the pieces and soldiering on.
Relationships: Kairi & Riku & Sora (Kingdom Hearts), Kairi & Riku (Kingdom Hearts)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 11





	unravel at the seams

**Author's Note:**

> ONE MORE TIME FOR PEOPLE IN THE BACK, THIS FIC CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR KH III AND THE KH III RE MIND DLC. 
> 
> Welcome to another exciting round of "the ending of this game bothered me on seventeen levels. I shall write a fic exploring each one of those." also, didn't really know what tropes to tag this with so feel free to recommend! 
> 
> This piece is (mostly) self edited. Con-crit is, as always, welcome and appreciated.

I moved in the dark

The room calm and cold

The quiet hollow

I am such a haunted soul

Your ghost has gone -- Don't Wake Me Up, The Hush Sound

* * *

_When Kairi first came to Destiny Islands, she was sad and scared all the time. Riku still remembers the afternoon Sora had dragged her in his wake to see him. “Riku knows all the best stories. He’ll know how to cheer you up, won’t you, Riku?”_

_Sora smiled up at Riku like he hung the stars and Riku would always, always do anything to keep that smile on his face._

_“Of course,” he said with false confidence as he wracked his brain for a story to make this new girl less miserable. “Once upon a time, there was a prince, a princess, and a knight.”_

_Kairi wrinkled her nose. “Was the princess stuck in a tower?”_

_Shoot, she was going to be. Riku scrambled to cover his tracks. “No way, she was too smart for any old tower to keep her. It was the prince; and the princess and the knight had to save him. They were all friends, you see.”_

Kairi is gone and Sora is going after her. Alone. Riku wants to go with him. He wants it like he wants air in his lungs and a heart beneath his ribs but he knows. He knows someone needs to stay behind. Someone needs to be the tether, calling them home if things go bad. 

(Mickey could go. Mickey would go. But Mickey is a King and he has been away from his kingdom for so long and the thought of telling Minnie that he’s gone again, by choice and not necessity, is too much, so when Mickey tries, Riku lies.)

Sora disappears. I _know what I have to do_ , and a flash of light and he was gone by the time Riku blinked the after image away. He takes a heartbeat to grieve and sets to work. There’s so many of them now; keyblade wielders. He looks over the wearied group of semi-familiar faces and makes a decision because nobody else has or seems like they will. There are too many feelings. Too many reunions. Too many friends finding lost hands to hold and shoulders to weep against. Riku is intimately aware of how cold and empty his hands feel. “We should go,” he says as a wind rises to wipe away his voice. “Xehanort may be gone, but this place isn’t safe.” 

Their eyes take in the rusted keyblades, left forgotten and unclaimed in a vast field. Nobody argues. “Can you show them the way back?” Riku asks Aqua. “There’s one more thing I have to do.” 

Hands link together, connections found with palms pressing against one another. Riku watches them go. He flexes his fingers around empty air and swallows the sorrow welling inside him. Sora and Kairi are gone, but they’ll be back. They always come back. 

He finds the empty vessel where he left it. Everything had happened so fast, there had been no time to get it stored away. Riku checks it over for damages; trying to imagine it as Namine and not just a blank mannequin. It makes him a little queasy to pick up — but he manages — handling it like it’s already a dear friend and not just dead weight. He wonders if they have the data extracted, like they did for Roxas, or if Namine will have to wait if (when, when he reminds his traitorous heart) Kairi returns. 

Sora and Kairi are gone. Riku makes himself busy. 

He’s not good with downtime — he’s never been good at sitting and waiting. Growing up there was fighting to learn, skirmishes to get into, knuckles to bruise. Then there was The Plan and a raft to build and dreams to make come true. Then it was: find Sora and Kairi, fight the dark power taking control of his body, get out of the realm of darkness, piece together Sora’s memory, ruin Roxas and Xion’s existence, find Aqua, save the worlds, find Sora and Kairi — only that last one is harder now than it was the first time around and and and....

He doesn’t really have anywhere to go, not really. Not like the others. Aqua, Terra, and Ven settle back into the Land of Departure and he doesn’t know any of them well enough to tag along while they grieve their lost master. Xion, Axel, and Roxas disappear for Twilight Town almost as soon as they’re done debriefing with Yen Sid. Riku gets along well enough with Axel now, and he has vague memories of Xion — now that she’s here to remember — but Roxas is a little chilly to him and even if he weren’t, Riku didn’t think he could handle looking at faces so similar to his missing friend. 

He could go back to Destiny Islands (it’s been too long to still call it home and mean it. Especially now; especially as unbalanced as he is. What is land without sea and sky: empty earth) but his mother will cry and Sora’s mother will cry and he won’t have enough answers for the adults they left behind. He knows he should go back but he’s not ready to, not yet. 

He stays with Yen Sid. The sorcerer is quiet and doesn’t seem to notice Riku’s presence. Riku finds little things to do, things Yen Sid wouldn’t bother asking and could probably handle with a flick of his wrist: repair the shingles on the top of the tower, weed back the hedges, fix the squeaky stairs. Riku figures the longer he can go without Yen Sid making any remark, the better off he is. 

When he’s not playing handyman there isn’t much to do so he reads; books on magic, on light, on darkness, on the balance of worlds and hearts. Some of it is dense and thick and he finds a stray notebook and starts scribbling things down to try and make sense of later. He’s looking for answers to questions he doesn’t know how to ask yet. 

He stays up too late. Wakes up too early. Tries not to sleep because in his sleep he dreams: hands in his, laughter breaking like waves on the shore and always, always, the warmth of loved ones at his side. 

Sleep deprivation is easier to deal with than waking with that aching yearn in his chest. 

Ienzo calls one day to say it’s done. Namine is waking up. “We were struggling,” he admits, “and then something just clicked into place and the transfer is being finalized. She’ll be awake within the day.”

Riku goes to get her because this is something he knows how to do. 

She looks so young standing on the steps of the Radiant Garden castle, shielding her eyes from the sun as the gummiship descends to whisk her away. He feels the time between last seeing her in his bones and he wonders how much he’s changed in her eyes. 

He doesn’t tell her — because he can’t think of a way to say it without sounding like an utter creep — but she doesn’t smell the same anymore. Before she had been an echo of an ocean breeze at midnight. Now she smells like a waterfall at daybreak. 

He wants to apologize to her for all the little ways he let DiZ mistreat her when they were working together. “Where do you want to go?” he asks instead, even as he’s punching in the coordinates; somehow he knows what she’s going to ask for before the words are even out of her mouth. 

The beach at Destiny Island is full of so many hearts. Everyone has gathered here; in this place where everything started so many times over. All called by the echoes of their own hearts _soon_ . There’s a contentment settling in Riku’s bones and he lets himself relax. Lets himself stop being a sentry for a couple of minutes as he races with the others up and down the sands of his childhood. His heart quickens _soon_ and he knows they were all drawn here together because any minute now, any second … 

His heartbeat skips and he stops mid conversation with Terra, sucking in a lungful of familiar air, eyes drawn immediately to the island with the paopu fruit tree. He can see Kairi and Sora; shadows against the setting sun. They just arrived and yet they’ve been there for hours. The grin of unbridled joy threatens to split Riku’s face, _they’re back_ and everything is right again and — 

And then Sora is gone. Or he was never there at all. Riku feels dizzy, off-balanced in a way he has never felt before. The others around him gasp. Namine takes a step towards the bridge that will lead to Kairi but Riku’s already gone, off like a shot. He knows the shortcuts; knows how to scale the roof of the tipsy shack. He’s running, eyes locked on the empty space beside Kairi, the feeling of not rightness churning in his gut. 

He approaches her, loud and out of breath. Kairi doesn’t move. She’s holding herself so still — trying not to breathe — eyes fixed on the sun. Riku rounds the bent trunk of the paopu tree and sees the streaks of tears cutting down her cheeks. 

He needs to know what happened but the ability to ask has been stolen from him in the face of her sorrow. Riku reaches out a hand, carefully, touches Kairi’s knee and calls her name. 

She blinks into the sunset once, twice, and then her face crumples and she brings her hands up to hide her sorrow. 

He knew the secret to stopping her tears, once upon a time. 

Once upon a time Kairi would have cried openly in front of him. Once upon a time she would have slid from the trunk of the tree into his waiting arms and sobbed herself senseless. Now Riku can’t even remember the last time he had a conversation with someone who was supposed to be one of his best friends. 

He clamors up beside her, on her left, leaving the space on her right empty where Sora was. Where Sora _should_ be. He doesn’t know what to do or say so he wraps her in an embrace she doesn’t return; squeezes her shoulders tight and to the night sky says: “it’s going to be alright.” 

Kairi is back and Sora is gone and Riku throws himself into solving the mystery because he doesn’t know how else to handle it. He tries to be practical about it this time, not run off half-cocked like they have so many times in the past. His borrowed room at Yen-Sid’s tower gets cramped with charts and maps and frantically scribbled notes.

He makes time to leave his room. Riku is terrified of never seeing Sora again but he’s seen what happens to people who lose themselves in their projects. He knows he won’t be good to anyone if he lets the research twist him.

He makes a point of visiting Kairi like checking off an item on his shopping list: wake up, read over Jiminy’s journals again, have lunch, go see Kairi.

They don’t really talk much. Kairi withdraws into herself, distant when Riku tries to make conversation. It didn’t used to be this hard. 

He can find her most days on the island with the paopu tree, looking out towards the horizon. It’s a lonely snapshot of a long gone time. _I can’t wait, once we set sail._ Riku joins her, leaning against the base of the trunk like they’re still kids planning their escape. Like the biggest thing blocking their dream is still a half finished raft and not an unfathomable distance between here and wherever Sora is. It’s easier to face the horizon than his friend.

Weeks pass like this. The chasm fractures ever wider between them. Riku is at a loss of how to bridge it. Maybe if he tried harder, maybe if he could give her some hope that they knew how to find Sora. 

“He’s gone again,” Kairi finally says one afternoon. She’s got one of the shell charms she used to weave in hand — an echo from a time when they were younger and more hopeful creatures. “I took him away, again.” She shivers and a tear falls onto the star shaped charm. “Do you hate me, Riku?” 

“You’re my friend too,” Riku says to the ocean in front of him and not the one contained in the girl settled above him. He picks his words with more care in these several seconds than he probably has anytime before in his life. It used to come so easy to him, saying the right thing. Now he swirls syllables against his tongue before releasing them tentatively in the air. “I guess I’m just sad. Not at you, never at you, Kairi.” 

“Riku.” 

He turns in time to see her slip down the trunk of the paopu tree and has just enough sense to bring his arms up to catch her; only stumbles a little under the sudden weight of her. Kairi cries against his collarbone. He feels her tears, hot and unbridled against his skin. Riku sinks to the sand, cradling her in his arms and thankful that maybe something is finally being put to right. 

If Sora had been here he would have encouraged Riku to tell a story. _Take our minds off all this_. But if Sora had been here Kairi wouldn’t be crying like this and besides, Riku is out of make believe.

The call from Terra comes out of the blue. Riku’s in the middle of organizing his research when the gummiphone trills, startling him, reminding him that he’s been connected to the others this whole time. _We need you to come here._

They’re going back into the Realm of Darkness. They look entirely too unconcerned about this. _Don’t worry,_ Aqua smiles, _I’m not alone this time._ It’s meant as a reassurance but it just serves to drive home how alone Riku is when she takes her place next to Terra and Ven. 

Someone has to stay at the Land of Departure. It’s a solemn duty he hadn’t known he was signing up for when he became a keyblade master. He moves his things from the tiny, cramped room at Yen Sid’s to one of the spare rooms in Departure. The halls are too big, too silent to contain him. 

Sora is gone and Riku is trying to fix that but he doesn’t know how. Mickey, Donald, and Goofy start retracing Sora’s journey through the worlds. They don’t ask him to come along, more mention it as an afterthought. He can’t help but feel like he’s been benched. _You have a kingdom to look after,_ he reminds Mickey, _why not let me go instead?_

_We all have our part,_ is Mickey’s cryptic reply. 

Sora is gone and Riku is lonely. He tries to convince the others to come to Departure but Kairi just shakes her head when he brings it up. He wants to ask her how long she plans on waiting here, next to legends and rotting fruit but instead just nods, _alright_ and lets them lapse back into silence again. That seems to be the only thing they have between them anymore.

Namine has had enough of these halls, even if they were in a different shape. Xion won’t leave Roxas and Axel and the whole lot of them are having too much fun playing normal in Twilight Town while Pence digs through the data Ansem left behind of their memories. He can’t really begrudge them that. He still reaches out though, to make amends for things he did. Good intentions or not, Riku knows he’s caused hurt. Xion forgives and forgets with a tight embrace and a bright smile. “You did what you had to,” she looks over her shoulder where Roxas and Axel are waiting. Xion gives Riku’s hands a squeeze and doesn’t say it in words but he knows she would have done the same thing in his place. It’s comforting, in a way, knowing someone gets him. 

Roxas eyes him over once before saying, “I forgive you but that doesn’t mean I have to like you.” He turns, walking away and Riku supposes that could have gone worse.

Sora is gone and Riku can’t remember the last time he slept in more than snatched moments. The dreams always get him in the end; warm and happy and a hand in each of his. It’s the only place he hears Kairi’s laughter anymore.

He goes to see Kairi again but she’s not on the beach. It means journeying to the main island, something he’s been putting off for far too long. He braces himself and walks the familiar streets. 

He runs, quite literally, into Selphie. She’s knocked back, would have been sent sprawling on the ground if he hadn’t caught her up by the elbow. She blinks up at him with wide eyes before asking, “Riku?” There’s a sound of faint awe and fear in her voice, the kind of sound reserved for ghosts visiting from beyond. He chooses to ignore it. 

“I’m looking for Kairi,” Riku says in lieu of a greeting. 

This makes Selphie frown, tilting her head at him suspiciously. “Kairi? She’s been gone for at least a week now.” 

He can’t breathe suddenly and for a moment there are two Selphie’s standing in front of him. Riku bites his tongue, counts to ten. “Do you know where to?” 

“Sorry, she stopped telling me things a long time ago.” 

Sora is gone and Kairi is missing and Riku is completely, utterly alone. He goes back to the island where they used to play for want of something to do. This is where it all started; decades before any of them were even born. It always comes back to here. 

He walks along the shore, remembering races and faux fights and afternoons spent laughing until their sides hurt and falling asleep with sand beneath their nails. The entrance to the Secret Place is a tight squeeze now, requiring him to almost crawl through it. The cool darkness swallows him up after the blinding light of the beach. Their cave scribbles have faded in places; half remembered stories smearing with time and neglect. Monsters created out of their nightmares. Little had they known how much worse those nightmares would become.

He finds the note under a rock in front of the door that leads to the heart of this world. 

_Riku, I think there may be a clue to finding Sora in my heart. I’ve been talking to Ienzo and he’s agreed to try and study what they can inside of me. - Kairi_

Sora is gone and Kairi is gone and Riku folds into himself, there on the cave floor and tries to remind himself what the motions are to breathing. He can’t help but think this isn’t how the story is supposed to go. Once upon a time they were all so close they could find their next word in each other’s mouth. Once upon a time they were inseparable; three parts of a whole that would do anything so long as it was together. 

He pulls himself together some hours later, body stiff from the awkward position he’d been in for so long. His eyes burn and his throat burns and his fingers ache from being clenched. Riku sets out again. 

Kairi is already asleep by the time he gets to Radiant Garden. Ienzo tries to talk him through some of the studies they’re doing. He half hears the words. This is too familiar for comfort; Kairi laying there unresponsive to the world around her. Has he come so far only to end up where he began? 

Sora is gone and Kairi is sleeping and Riku is lost. He doesn’t understand enough for any of his research to be helpful so he scraps all of it. He fills his day with nothing: exercises and training and silence. Time bleeds into itself. Some days he forgets to eat and it’s only the hollow pangs of his belly that remind him he’s a living, needful creature. Food tastes like ash on his tongue but he chokes it down when he remembers to. Sleep has gotten more impossible than it was before, haunted as he is by could bes and should haves. 

Riku visits Kairi more often. Ienzo is kind about it, clearing everyone out of the lab as Riku sits by her side. He tells her stories — the ones he can remember at least — and tries to keep the loneliness out of his voice. She liked his stories, once upon a time.

“We’ve been here before, you and I,” he says one afternoon, looping his fingers around her wrist. Her pulse is slow but steady; skin cool to the touch. “Not quite the same, I suppose. This time I know for sure your heart is inside you. I just —” Riku sighs. There are too many things to say and not enough time or words to say them. So he slips into silence and holds onto the only friend he has left. It’s not so different from how it was when she was awake.

Sora is gone and Kairi is asleep and Riku finally has a clue. It comes in a dream, because of course it does, and he wakes sweating and full of something he hasn’t felt in a long time: hope. He calls Axel to Departure because _someone has to be there to guard the place_ and he’s off to Radiant Garden one last time. 

Kairi is just as still as she was the last time he saw her. She’s in too deep to be woken quickly. Riku doesn't have the time to wait. He kisses her forehead for goodbye — for luck, for everything — and asks Ienzo to give her a note when she wakes up. 

_Kairi, Gone to rescue the prince from the tower. Join us when you can. -Riku._

Sora is gone and Kairi is asleep but not for long if Riku has anything to say about it. 

  
  



End file.
